


I'll Wait For You

by ThoscheiTrash



Series: Thoschei Fics [12]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Spydoc (mentioned), Thoschei, Thrissy, flashback to the academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24618460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoscheiTrash/pseuds/ThoscheiTrash
Summary: The Doctor and Missy sit under the stars, in the same place that the Doctor had once sat with her version of the Master, when he'd been pretending to be a a spy called O. They think about their love for each other, and how they had once sat under the stars as children, back on Gallifrey.
Relationships: The Doctor | Theta Sigma/The Master | Koschei (Doctor Who: Academy Era), Thirteenth Doctor/Missy, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan) (Mentioned)
Series: Thoschei Fics [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621621
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	I'll Wait For You

“I know you’re there.” The Doctor said, though she never stopped looking straight ahead, gazing at the horizon. 

“I know. But I was enjoying watching you.” 

That voice… hadn’t been what she’d expected. But she recognised it - it was the voice of her old friend, the woman who’d tried to be better, just because she asked her to. Slowly turning her head to face the source of the voice, the Doctor caught the hint of a smirk on the other woman’s lips. 

“Surprised?” Missy asked, an eyebrow raised. She looked so _smug,_ so pleased with herself for shocking her old friend, and the Doctor simply stared at her in confusion.

“What are you _doing_ here? _How_ are you even here?”

“I’m great, thanks for asking.” She said dryly, crossing her arms over her chest and rolling her eyes. When the Doctor stayed silent, simply waiting for an answer to her questions, she sighed. “You haven’t visited me in nearly six months - I was getting _bored,_ left in that vault all by myself. And I know where you hid my Vortex Manipulator, so I grabbed that as soon as I’d broken out.”

Ah, of course - she was from her past. She had appeared from during the time that the monks were taking over Earth, and the Doctor had been too busy to visit her. She did feel a _little_ guilty about that, even though she _had_ been a prisoner herself.

Still, she’d hoped that maybe Missy had been from _after_ the last time she’d seen her - it would’ve been nice to know that her chapter with this version of her old friend wasn’t over. Letting herself hope for that had been foolish, however, even if it _had_ been for only a brief few seconds. She had the _new_ Master now - the one who’d tried to kill her on a plane (though Missy had done that one, too), the one who’d gotten a little too close for comfort with one of her friends (again, that didn’t narrow it down) - But more important than either of those things, he was the one who’d burned their planet, and who’d decided to tell her the Time Lord’s awful secret. More than anything, he was the one that she wished she didn’t love. 

It had been easy, with Missy. She’d loved him, and he’d loved her, and once he’d convinced her that she could be _better,_ the two of them finally reached a place in their relationship that they’d never quite managed before. They’d had movie nights, and they’d had dates, and they’d pretended that they hadn’t done horrible things to each other since leaving Gallifrey. 

But _her_ Master didn’t want to do any of those things. Or maybe he did, and the Doctor just wasn’t giving him the chance anymore. Either way, they didn’t act the same way that she used to with Missy. 

He still loved her though, in his own way. Somewhere deep down, they both knew that. 

“You should go back.” The Doctor said. “He’ll wonder where you are.”

Missy scoffed in response. “He’s been gone for six months, with no explanation. I’m happy to let him wonder.” 

“He’ll worry.”

“ _I_ worried. He deserves a taste of his own medicine.”

The Doctor wasn’t sure what to say to that, but she knew she couldn’t reveal too much. She couldn’t defend herself, or say that she was locked up somewhere, because that would be giving away too much of her own future. Instead, she sighed. “Sorry. He’ll be back soon.” At least by telling her that, she’d ensure that Missy wouldn’t run off somewhere, never to return. After all, she _needed_ to go back, or their own personal history would be different, and the Doctor _really_ wasn’t in the mood for trying to stop time resetting, or for trying to stop any paradoxes. She’d come out here, to where O’s little house had once stood, to watch the sun as it set over the desert. 

“He better be.”

The Doctor was sat on a camp chair, her TARDIS just a few feet away, and Missy was leaning up against it. There was another camp chair on the floor between them, still folded up and tucked away in its case, just waiting to be unfolded. When the Doctor had brought out the two chairs, she’d convinced herself that it was simply because she didn’t want to have to go back inside if it turned out that the one she brought was uncomfortable or broken. But somewhere deep down, she knew the real reason. Some small part of her had been waiting ( _hoping_ ) to feel the presence of another Time Lord, and expecting ( _begging_ ) him to sit beside her. Maybe it could be like old times, she had thought. (But Missy being here meant that it wasn’t just _like_ old times, it _was_ old times.) She’d wanted him to act like Missy, and now here she was, standing just a few feet away.

Though not standing for long, it seemed - the Doctor had turned her attention back to the horizon at some point, but she could see Missy unfolding the other chair out of the corner of her eye, and she pretended that it didn’t make her want to smile. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” the Doctor said, despite the happiness sparking in her.

“Neither should you.” Missy simply got a raised eyebrow in response, so she continued. “You’re meant to be out saving the universe, one distress call at a time, but here you are, watching the sun set over the Australian outback. That’s rather disappointing, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.”

Missy paused, and sunk down into the camp chair that she had just set up, a sad look briefly crossing her face. “You never do.”

A companionable silence settled over them for a little while, and the Doctor sipped at the hot tea she was drinking out of a thermos. The evening air cooled their skin, but it didn’t bother them. Time Lord bodies ran naturally colder than humans did, anyway.

“Why are you here?” The Doctor asked, because she could absolutely tell that while her own attention was focussed solely on the sky, Missy’s eyes kept darting over to her, taking her in.

“I-.” 

“ _Don’t_ say it’s because you’re bored - why are you _really_ here?”

Missy didn’t respond for a moment, seemingly deciding which answer was the best option. Was it the one where she said that she’d missed her best friend, or the one where she admitted that she’d wanted to see what the Doctor would one day become? Maybe it was the one where she said she loved her - that she always had - and begged the Doctor never to leave her alone again. In the end, she decided that none of those reasons were worth saying aloud, so she simply shrugged. “I could ask you the same question.”

“Don’t.” No, she didn’t think that she could handle being asked why she was there. Or, more accurately, she didn’t think she could handle having to _answer._

“Why?”

Because she might burst into tears; because she might end up giving too much detail about Missy’s future; because she might admit that she was in love with the Master and wanted to see him again even after all he’d done, and that coming to the place where they’d once sat together made her feel closer to him. “Because I don’t have a good enough answer.”

Missy seemed to understand, because she didn’t ask again. 

The pair of them looked up at the sky as it started to become a shade of orange, and it made them both think of home. Back when they were children, they had lain beneath the orange sky, whispering secrets and coming up with plans to escape their home world. 

_“One day, we’re going to see the stars. We’ll steal a TARDIS and run away, and then we’ll travel the universe together.”_

_“Stealing is_ wrong _, Koschei,” Theta had said, even though he secretly loved the idea._

 _“Is anything_ really _wrong, if it makes us happy?”_

_“I think I know what our teachers would say to that.”_

_“But what do_ you _say?”_

_Theta closed his eyes and reached out to take the hand of his best friend, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I say… we should do it.” Even with his eyes closed, there was no mistaking the way that Koschei grinned._

_“Really?”_

_“Yeah.” He breathed, and when his eyes opened once again, the ecstatic face of his best friend was hovering only inches from his own. “As soon as we graduate from the academy, we’ll leave, okay?”_

_They still had a few years to go, but Koschei knew it was worth the wait. After all, they needed to learn to pilot a TARDIS before they had a chance of stealing one._

_“As soon as we graduate.” He repeated, turning so he was looking up at the sky once again. “I’ll wait for you.”_

_They may have been young, but they both knew that he meant it. Koschei would go to the very end of the universe for his friend, so waiting a few years was nothing to him. He would wait, and then they would run away, and they would never have to think about their home planet again._

_“I know.” Theta had whispered, and although at the time it had been a simple sentence that neither of them bothered to worry about, the two friends had thought back on it often. If only he’d said something different. If only he’d said ‘I’ll wait for you, too,’ and if only he’d meant it._

“I’m sorry.” The Doctor whispered, her eyes glistening with unshed tears as she looked up at the sky, not being able to bring herself to look her old friend in the eye. It was silent for a moment, and the Doctor thought that Missy wasn’t going to grace her with a response - she had every right not to, but it didn’t stop the Doctor’s heart from aching. But just as the pain started to become too much, she felt a hand covering her own, and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally intended to be a smut fic. Now it's 4am and I'm crying. Please let me know what you thought, you guys have no idea how much I appreciate your feedback!


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